6 May 2026

In a press release, Thames Rowing Club announces that the club will shine a spotlight on rowing great Jack Beresford. Jack’s son, John, will talk about his father and his achievements at an event at the club on 3 June.

Rower Jack Beresford was one of the most successful British athletes in history. On the 90th anniversary of his gold medal triumph at the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games, the club he called home, Thames Rowing Club, will welcome back his son John to celebrate Jack’s many achievements on and off the water.

John Beresford will speak at Thames’s historic Victorian clubhouse on Wednesday 3 June, bringing with him a selection of his father’s medals and trophies. The evening will be centred around Thames RC’s history at the time of Jack Beresford’s achievements, particularly the 1920s and 1930s.

Jack Beresford is, by some distance, the most famous member of Thames RC in its 166-year history. In the years between the two World Wars, he had an extraordinary array of wins in eights, coxless fours, pairs, doubles and, most especially, in his single.

At a time when international sporting competition was just beginning to become common, Jack took on the best in the world and won. His Olympic career spanned five Games and, before Steve Redgrave, he was the most successful Olympian – not just in rowing but in any sport – with three gold and two silver medals.

John Beresford says he has enjoyed looking back at his father’s life and comparing it to his own, and he has tried to follow Jack’s example in many ways, including fair play, the ability to talk to anyone, and a keen interest in volunteering to teach the next generation.

“Dad always had the ability to chat to anybody, but didn’t ‘suffer fools gladly’. He wasn’t a stuffy rowing heavy, as some were,” John says. “I’ve found this ability very satisfying and helpful in my life.”

That ability to talk to a wide audience will be demonstrated during John’s talk, where he will share anecdotes from his father’s long career.

As the 90th anniversary of the Berlin 1936 Olympics approaches, Thames RC’s archivist James Elder is also in the process of digitising Jack Beresford’s incredible collection of photographs and other memorabilia to make them publicly available.

James says: “Jack Beresford was a keen photographer and scrapbooker, documenting his life from his schooldays, through his World War I service and recovery from injury, his long rowing career, and into his later family life. He filled six large albums of around 100 pages each with photographs, postcards, telegrams and other memorabilia, all well-captioned, plus further albums of newspaper cuttings and hundreds more loose photos.

“Together they form a fascinating record of the life of one of the UK’s greatest sportsmen. Until now this material has been open only to Jack’s family – and we’re all looking forward so much to putting it all online later this summer.

“In the meantime, it will be great to share some of them as an accompaniment to what I’m sure will be a fascinating Q&A with Jack’s son John, who has looked after them so well.”

All are welcome to attend the event on Wednesday 3 June, from 19:00. Tickets are £5 and include light refreshments. To purchase tickets, click here.

Editor’s note: In December last year, HTBS’s Tim Koch ran a series with photographs of Jack Bersford’s photo albums.